Heart of Darkness: Why Are There So Many Sex Offenders Around the Royals?

The reign of King Charles III has seen the Royal Family finding itself in more turmoil than at any point in recent history. There have been controversies before, of course, with the death of Princess Diana sending the royals’ popularity plummeting back in the 1990s. However, it’s hard to think of another period in the modern era when so many scandals have put the question of a British Republic firmly back on the agenda, certainly among younger Britons.

Right from the beginning when King Charles arrived at Westminster Abbey in his golden carriage draped in his gold cloak, the family had rarely seemed so out of touch with modern life, as the cost of living crisis continued to impoverish millions of Britons. However, his place in history was already assured as he was crowned with more priceless stolen gold and jewels. It’s French Revolutionary stuff, and alongside Meghan Markle, Prince Harry, the near unprecedented stripping of Andrew of his title, and the ongoing culture war online, it all sits uncomfortably with today’s socially conscious population. No matter where Britons stand, few could deny that the royals have looked increasingly as a relic of a bygone era.

Yet, as far as scandals go, perhaps the Andrew scandal casts the largest shadow.

Vilified on both sides of the Atlantic, the Andrew formerly known as a Prince has been accused of sex trafficking and having intercourse with underage girls alongside his one-time friend, the notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. This is where the scandal ends for many, and it’s certainly bad enough. However, the links between Buckingham Palace and an astonishing number of pedophiles is so much bigger and are rarely mentioned in the British media as a collective issue. Let’s take a look.

The number of child sex abusers linked to Buckingham Palace is astonishing. For just one example, in 2015, a former Metropolitan Police officer revealed an unnamed member of the Royal family had been investigated in the 1980s for his links to a pedophile ring. The investigation was shut down. Speaking with the Daily Mirror, the unnamed officer said the CPS were responsible.

“I was in a car with two other vice squad officers. … The detective sergeant said he had just had a major child abuse investigation shut down by the CPS regarding a royal and an MP… He did not mention names, but he said the CPS had said it was not in the public’s interest because it ‘could destabilize national security’.” — Unnamed former Metropolitan Police officer

While he was dead by this point and not the subject of the revelation, anyone who has read our previous article Lord Louis Mountbatten won’t be surprised. For those who haven’t read the story, we have provided a link below. As with Mountbatten, Kincora, and the circle surrounding his activities and those of the security services in Northern Ireland, MI5 and MI6 were interested in only protecting the establishment and social order they existed to serve. It would allow dozens, if not hundreds, to get away with unspeakable crimes.

Here are eight more recent examples of child abuse linked to the royals.

Jonathan Rees-Williams, the Queen’s former choirmaster, was jailed in 2004 for “despicable and offensive” sex attacks on young children. At trial, he was said to have “fallen from the top to the bottom of society.”

In 2006, former royal butler Nicholas Greaves was jailed for possessing 473 images and videos of child abuse; photos said to have included torture. Greaves was said to have been the late Queen’s favorite and was on hand at state functions and important events, including the former monarch’s 80th birthday celebrations at Windsor Castle.

In 2008, Paul Kidd, another royal butler, was revealed as the head of a pedophile ring while working at the palace. Kidd had worked for the Queen and, on one occasion, took one of his grooming victims to have tea with the Queen Mother at Clarence House. He was found in possession of 19,000 pornographic pictures and videos of children.

Ross Thomas, a steward at Windsor Castle, was given a suspended prison sentence for grooming and abusing a young boy in 2011.

In 2015, a jury found Hubert Chesshyre had committed sexual offenses against a young boy. Chesshyre served in the royal household for over 40 years as Clarenceux King of Arms, the second most senior member of the College of Arms. Despite his offenses, the Observer reported that: “The various societies of which he is a member confirmed that they would not be dissociating themselves from him.”

In July 2018, Tony Aslett, the visitor services warden for the Royal Collection Trust, was jailed for nine months after being caught possessing 15,000 indecent images and videos of children.

In December of the same year, it was revealed that the Queen’s chauffeur Alwyn Stockdale sexually abused a 10-year-old boy in the Royal Household quarters at Buckingham Palace Mews and assaulted a second boy under 14 at a relative’s home.

The next year, 2019, brought yet further conviction. Andrew Lightwood, another former butler to the Queen, had unbuttoned his trousers and exposed himself to a boy before touching him sexually.

However, one association that requires a more in-depth look is that of Sir Harold Haywood.

February of 2016 revealed that the police were investigating links between the notorious 1970s pro-pedophile group the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) and the gay rights charity the Albany Trust, headed by Sir Harold Haywood, a trusted advisor to Prince Charles, now the King. Haywood was director of the Royal Jubilee and Prince’s Trust.

PIE was a pro-pedophile “activist group” active between 1974 and 1984, campaigning to abolish the consent age and legitimize pedophilia in mainstream circles through public exposure. The known group was frequently used by pedophiles to network and exchange child pornography and other illegal material. In 1976 the Albany Trust worked with PIE to produce a pamphlet on the “sexuality of children.”

“One argument for lowering or abolishing the age of consent rests on the knowledge and experience that children are at least as capable of deciding how to express themselves sexually as they are in expressing other basic needs or desires, for example for food, comfort, security, companionship, play.” — Albany Trust pamphlet

It should be noted that Haywood was never charged with any crime, nor to the public knowledge the subject of any personal investigation or even official suspicion, yet many coincidences spring out.

Haywood was a director of the National Association of Youth Clubs (NAYC) between 1955 and 1974, and during the time Sir Angus Ogilvy, husband of Princess Alexandra, was made president. The group enlisted a range of celebrities to fund-raise for them, including the later exposed Jimmy Savile and Rolf Harris, as well as famous musicians of the 1960s.

Interestingly, this circle also includes one Sara Morrison through Antony Grey, the Chair of Trustees at the Albany Trust. Grey had wanted to appoint Morrison as Chair of the charity in 1974, but Morrison turned him down. Sara Morrison was the daughter-in-law of John Granville Morrison, Baron Margadale of Islay in the County of Argyll, married to Charles Morrison. His brother-in-law was Peter Morrison, the Conservative MP for Chester, and between 1988 and 1990, he was Parliamentary Private Secretary to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Interestingly Sara Morrison was considered the most significant woman in the life of Edward Heath, against whom numerous allegations have been made but never proven. Her brother-in-law Peter Morrison, Thatcher’s PPS, was also a pedophile.

Many would have you believe that Jimmy Savile was a Svengali-type character who, through the sheer force of his personality, was able to “groom the nation” and cast the spell of celebrity over witnesses to walk away scot-free with his crimes, including hundreds of sexual assaults against women, children and, allegedly, corpses. This is, of course, ludicrous. Such a prolific career of criminality can only ever be achieved by being protected at the highest levels. Yet, nobody has ever been charged with aiding and abetting Jimmy Savile. While his name will be evoked for decades to come, the question of co-conspirators has been replaced by this myth of his having untold powers of deception.

The truth in life is that justice is never equal. A normal man on the street would have been imprisoned for Jimmy Savile’s crimes decades ago. Yet, Savile was no ordinary man, or rather, those he was connected to were not.

Savile first came into royal circles in the 1970s, having met Charles through charity work. They met several times during this period, and after Savile’s death and the subsequent revelations about his offending, a spokesman for the then-Prince would say that “it was primarily because of this [charity] connection that they maintained a relationship in the years that followed.”

However, this isn’t strictly true as Savile is known to have visited Charles at his London residence at least several times in the 1980s and was so trusted by the royals that he was bizarrely allowed to act as a kind of marriage counselor when Charles’ marriage to Princess Diana was on the rocks, something which was later denied despite multiple sources confirming it as fact. Hardly the position of an acquaintance through charity work.

It’s also not like Savile was subtle during his time in royal circles.

Speaking with The Guardian in 2012, a former spokesman for the late Queen Elizabeth Dickie Arbiter said that Savile “would walk into the office and do the rounds of the young ladies taking their hands and rubbing his lips all the way up their arms if they were wearing short sleeves.”

“If it was summer [and their arms were bare] his bottom lip would curl out and he would run it up their arms. This was at St James’s Palace. The women were in their mid to late 20s doing typing and secretarial work.” — Dickie Arbiter

Indeed, far from maintaining a relationship only through charity work, journalist Catherine Mayer revealed in her 2015 biography Charles: The Heart of a King that Prince Charles “trusted Jimmy Savile on everything from marriage guidance to checking speeches.”

“Charles also consulted Savile on other matters. One source tells of an occasion when the Prince asked his famous occasional adviser to read over a speech he was due to give on a topic unrelated to health care or any field in which Savile had expertise.” — Catherine Mayer

In 1999, Charles visited the home of Savile in Glen Coe, Scotland, where they enjoyed a private meal. Charles then sent gifts to his charity acquaintance that read, “Nobody will ever know what you have done for this country, Jimmy. This is to go some way in thanking you for that.”

However, it wasn’t only Charles who sent telegrams, with Savile having ingratiated himself to lesser effect with other members of the Royal Family such as Prince Philip, Andrew’s former wife Sarah Ferguson and Sir Angus Ogilvy, husband to Princess Alexandria, cousin to the then Queen. That being the same Angus Ogilvy, president of the National Association of Youth Clubs mentioned above, and Andrew, who became embroiled with Jeffrey Epstein. What a small world full of coincidences.

Once again, many didn’t want the royal links to be known. In 2009, before his death, Savile was questioned by police about allegations made against him by a former pupil at Duncroft School in Staines, Surrey. An internal police report stated Savile had said that the first time he went to the school was “with Princess Alexandria for a garden party.” Yet when transcripts from Savile’s interview were released, there was no mention of the Princess, with the press eventually going to the Information Commissioner’s Office to get the full account.

The heavily redacted text revealed that Savile considered Alexandria, who he called “Alex,” to be a friend. Indeed, in his 1974 autobiography, he’d written of Alexandria and the school, brazenly saying, “Princess Alex is a patron of a hostel for girls in care. At this place I’m a cross between a term-time boyfriend and a fixer of special trips out.”

If police in 2009 were willing to redact a fairly innocuous comment about Alexandria, it leaves one wondering what other royal connections were buried over Savile’s half-century of crime.

In terms of Charles, we know that he was indeed aware of the allegations against Savile. Quoted by The Daily Mail in 2015, a senior aide said that “The Prince did receive letters from the public complaining about Savile, but the writers were dismissed [by him] as jealous or mad.’”

Once again, we return to the magical Svengali who wielded power over the poor deluded prince. Indeed, so unfortunate is the King that this happened twice.

In 2015, Prince Charles came under criticism for his relationship with disgraced Bishop Peter Ball after Ball was jailed for abusing 18 teenagers and men over three decades.

Ball had been a bishop since 1977, and he had extensive contact with children, including novice monks. He was finally forced to resign in 1993 after admitting an act of gross indecency with a 17-year-old monk, the police issuing him with caution. Lawyers for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) believed that there was sufficient evidence of the offence, as well as sexual assault, to proceed to an indictment. However, the head of the CPS at the time, Barbara Mills, decided not to proceed with a prosecution.

Despite the lurid allegations, including sexual assault, Ball’s resignation seemingly did nothing to stop his friendship with the then Prince Charles. Indeed, following his resignation, he was granted accommodation on the Duchy of Cornwall estate, which Charles owns. It didn’t do Ball’s career any particular harm either, with then Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey allowing him to continue officiating as a priest.

Ball became a regular at Highgrove, sharing “intimate exchanges” with Charles. The Prince had sought his council as his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales, hit the rocks, with Ball later encouraging him to persue his relationship with Camilla Parker Bowles. And who was it that ingratiated him into the royal household? Jimmy Savile. Savile, it seems, wasn’t only a confidant of Charles, but also Ball. Again, what a small world.

Neil Todd, one of Ball’s victims, said that Ball kept framed photos of the royals on his desk and that his relationship with Charles was strong. Before his suicide in 2012, Todd said the Prince had written Ball personal letters. “He didn’t say what was in them …Then he told me they were in his safe and added: ‘One day they will be very valuable.’ We knew that Bishop Peter and the Prince were good friends. He didn’t refer to him as Prince Charles. He would always say just Charles.“

Alongside cosy fireside chats, his relationship with Charles involved the exchange of over 50 letters and the two men praying together at Highgrove. The men were so close that Ball was invited to Charles’ marriage to Camilla in 2005 and delivered the address at the funeral of Major Bruce Shand, Camilla’s father. Indeed, Ball wasn’t only befriended by Charles but also on close terms with the then Queen Mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, and Princess Margaret, presumably having been introduced by Charles. Even the late Queen Elizabeth got in on the act, saying “My love and encouragement, Bishop” publicly after lunch one day at Chapter House.

Ball was eventually arrested in 2012 for offences against eight boys and young men aged from 12 into their early 20s. He pleaded guilty to guilty to two counts of indecent assault and one of misconduct in a public office. However, the CPS, now headed by Alison Saunders, allowed the most serious offences against teenage boys to lie on file, meaning there was enough evidence for a prosecution. Still, they didn’t believe it was in the public interest. Many saw it as the establishment ensuring that Ball was treated lightly, and sure enough, he received just 32 months in prison, being eligible for parole in 18 months.

The Church of England was accused of orchestrating a cover-up. Indeed, George Carey’s own words are enlightening. In letters to the CPS and police, he’d written of his concern for Ball’s health and the “excruciating pain and spiritual torment which these allegations have brought upon [Ball].” His attempts to manipulate leniency are quite plain.

“I was worried that if any other allegations of past indecency were made it would reignite. I wanted some reassurance that this would not be the case. I was so troubled, that evening after dinner I went to my study. I was supplied with a number of a man at the CPS I believed to be a director. I do not recall his name. I rang him and asked what might happen if allegations from the past were made. I was told quite categorically that the other allegations would not be taken further as far as we are concerned. He has resigned. He is out of it. The matter is closed. We are not going to take anything any further.” — George Carey

However, Carey was far from alone in his support for Ball back in 1993, with letters of support coming from a Lord Justice of Appeal, cabinet ministers, public school headmasters and a member of the Royal Family. Just who that member was, wasn’t revealed, though Charles released a statement following the trial to deny he had interfered in the legal process back in 1993. Some later suggestions in the press hinted it may have been Diana, while friends said the suggestion was all too convenient as she could no longer deny it.

After the full horror of his crimes came to light, Buckingham Palace attempted to shrug off the history between Ball and Charles, with one courtier telling the press: “I have to say neither the Prince nor indeed the Princess can have known the full extent of the allegations against him, merely that he had been cautioned for a single misdemeanour some years earlier.”

This is, of course, a somewhat ridiculous suggestion. Britain is one of the most effective surveillance states in the Western world, and the immense security surrounding the royals is absolute. Nobody gets in or out without thorough vetting. Yet, we are supposed to believe that none of these people was made aware of the bishop’s caution and other allegations surrounding him, just as we are to believe that nobody in authority ever warned the royals of allegations surrounding Jimmy Savile. If that truly is the case, then why was there such a failure by the security services to make the royals aware of who Charles was associating himself with? Or was it more a case that he simply didn’t care?

Perhaps one clue as to whether Charles knew the truth came after Ball gave a public interview where he revealed his friendship with the prince. Charles was said to have flown into a rage, angrily demanding that staff “Tell Peter that he must never talk about me again.’”

Why would he be bothered if he believed his friend to be innocent?

It’s no secret that the Royal Family’s links to sex abuse aren’t limited to Savile and Ball, with neither even being the the only skeletons in the King’s closet. In 2003, news broke that an allegation had been made against Prince Charles. Buckingham Palace denied it, leaving the British public very confused as nobody knew what was being denied. Attempting to kill the story, there was a British news embargo imposed by a court that prevented anyone repeating the allegations.

Foreign papers weren’t bound by the restrictions and revealed that Charles had been caught in a “compromising position” with a senior male servant. The act had been witnessed by under-valet, George Smith. What added a level of intrigue to the tale was that, according to the New York Times, the allegations had allegedly been tape recorded by Princess Diana and kept in a mahogany box. Smith also alleged on the tape that he’d been raped by another servant. In 2005, George Smith died at the age of just 44 from internal bleeding, having suffered from alcoholism for many years.

While Buckingham Palace pretty much managed to keep a lid on both of Smith’s allegations, they wouldn’t be anywhere near as successful with the former Prince Andrew, his proclivities being a major international scandal. The relations between Andrew and the late sex trafficker are well known and extensively covered in the public domain, and as such, will not be touched on in great depth here. However, what the mainstream press often leaves unsaid is more telling than what is said.

Jeffrey Epstein wasn’t always a banker. He’d been a teacher. It was in the 1970s that he worked as a physics and mathematics teacher at Dalton High in Manhattan’s Upper East Side. It’s alleged that while working there, he first showed signs of who he would become with frequent inappropriate behavior toward teenage girls. While teaching, he became familiar with Alan Greenberg, chief executive of Bear Sterns, with Greenberg’s son and daughter attending the school. And just like that, after being dismissed in 1976 for “poor performance”, Epstein ended up at Bear Sterns.

He went from Bear Sterns to his firm, Intercontinental Assets Group Inc. (IAG), in 1981, and the rest is history. However, it’s here in the 1980s that we start to see the unspoken side of Jeffrey Epstein — the fact that he was an intelligence agent. It’s also worth bringing in here who his partner was — Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of media mogul Robert Maxwell.

At the time, the British Foreign Office believed that Robert Maxwell was a double or triple agent working for the Soviet Union’s KGB, Israel’s Mossad and even Britain’s MI6. While some may be surprised by the last one, British government departments not talking to one another is quite normal.

Robert Maxwell famously “committed suicide” in 1991, but shortly before he vanished from his boat in the sea around the Canary Islands, a former member of Israel’s Military Intelligence Directorate, Ari Ben-Menashe, approached several newspapers with revelations that Maxwell and the foreign editor of Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper which he owned, Nicholas Davies, worked for Mossad. The story was, of course, ignored, but legendary investigative journalist Seymour Hersh of The New Yorkerpicked it up and openly repeated some of the allegations at a press conference. From there, MPs Rupert Allason and George Galloway raised questions in the House of Commons, using parliamentary protection against prosecution for slander. Once in the public domain, the press could report on the allegations, which Maxwell called “ludicrous.”

Despite the allegation being “ludicrous,” at least six serving and former heads of Israeli intelligence were at Maxwell’s funeral alongside then-Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir.

Jeffrey Epstein, meanwhile, openly boasted of his links to the intelligence services in the 1980s. He possessed at least one foreign passport in a false name, claiming that he lived in Saudi Arabia and counted businessman Adnan Khashoggi amongst his clients. Arms dealer Khashoggi was supremely well connected and is the uncle of the lately more famous Jamal Khashoggi. He was also the uncle of Dodi Fayed, who died in the same 1997 car crash that killed Princess Diana, the former wife of the then Prince Charles. Small world, yet again. Long before then, Khashoggi was a key middleman in the Iran-Contra affair, where the Reagan administration secretly funneled weapons to Iran between 1981 and 1986, despite an arms embargo. The revenue was to fund the brutal far-right Contras in Nicaragua in a Cold War effort to fight communism. Another name that was involved? Ari Ben-Menashe. The coincidences continue.

Indeed, one of the things that rarely gets highlighted is how Epstein got so rich. While shady dealings are part and parcel of being a billionaire, nobody seems to know where Epstein’s money came from. He claimed it was from being a financial advisor to his many famous contacts, yet all of his clients remain unnamed, and given his lifestyle, he was certainly not a man dedicated to the concept of work. Perhaps the biggest clue came in 2017 when the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida Alexander Acosta, the man who handled the Epstein case in 2008, is reported to have told Trump staffers that he “was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to ‘leave it alone’”, and that Epstein was “above his pay grade.”

In 2019, in an interview with former CBS News executive producer Zev Shalev, Ari Ben-Menashe again had much to say. Ben-Menashe says that he met both Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell during their early days in the 1980s and that both were already working for Mossad alongside Robert Maxwell.

“[Maxwell] wanted us to accept him [Epstein] as part of our group …. I’m not denying that we were at the time a group that it was Nick Davies, it was Maxwell, it was myself and our team from Israel, we were doing what we were doing.” Ben-Menashe added that Robert Maxwell told him that “your Israeli bosses have already approved [of Epstein].” — Ari Ben-Menashe

Epstein travelled extensively between the US, Europe, and Southwest Asia, and as his wealth and influence grew became an acquaintance of Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein, Rupert Murdoch, Michael Jackson, Tony Blair, Ehud Barak, Alan Dershowitz, Kevin Spacey and more.

Epstein’s crimes need little recapping, with multiple cases of rape and sexual assault against teenage girls to his name. Federal officials found thirty-six girls willing to make statements against him, some as young as 14. However, it was the sex trafficking side of Epstein’s operation that won the most shocking headlines, with the allegation that Epstein had pimped out teenage girls to some of the world’s most elite names. Perhaps the most famous accusation was that against Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

It was in 2014 that a court first heard that Epstein pimped out girls to “prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known prime minister, and other world leaders,” with victim Virginia Giuffre naming Andrew as one of Epstein’s customers. Giuffre alleged that between 1999 and 2002, she was essentially a sex slave, and she had had sex with Andrew on three occasions, including once in London. Flight logs showed that Epstein’s plane was in the locations she alleged, and his former butler, Tuan Alessi, stated that the relationship was far closer than anyone suspected, alleging that Andrew “spent weeks with us” and received “daily massages.” Indeed, so close were Andrew and Epstein that Andrew had him pay off debts for his ex-wife, Sarah Ferguson, and even publicly met the disgraced financier after he’d pled guilty.

Speaking on the BBC’s Panorama, Giuffre asked the British public to stand with her.

“I implore the people in the U.K. to stand beside me, to help me fight this fight, to not accept this as being ok.” — Virginia Giuffre

In 2021, Giuffre sued Andrew in the federal District Court for the Southern District of New York for sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Andrew’s attempts to get the case dismissed were rejected, and he eventually settled by donating to Giuffre’s charity that she set up for victims of abuse. However, the case would have very little real impact on Andrew for years more. Despite protests in the street and claims in the royal-friendly press that Andrew was being sidelined, quite the opposite was true. He remained a Vice Admiral in the Royal Navy, an Admiral of the Sea Cadet Corps, a Commodore-in-Chief of the Fleet Air Arm, a Colonel of multiple army units, and as Counsellor of State was tasked with filling in for King Charles if he was unable to fulfill his duties.

Only in January 2022, with the lawsuit burning in open court, did the royal household finally strip his military roles and patronages and say he would no longer use ‘His Royal Highness.’ Even then, the retreat was managed, not moral. The Crown didn’t suddenly discover standards; it discovered headlines. Parliament later moved to ensure the “Counsellor of State” safety valve didn’t require leaning on non-working royals, effectively widening the bench so the monarchy wouldn’t have to keep Andrew (or Harry) in the emergency lineup. And the Epstein shadow didn’t lift, it kept re-surfacing in waves of documents and renewed public attention, including the unsealing of material in U.S. litigation tied to Epstein and Maxwell that dragged familiar names back into circulation.

By late 2025, Andrew announced he would stop using the Duke of York title after discussions with the King, a symbolic deflation, years late, arriving only after the story refused to die quietly. And even then, the palace choreography stayed the same, just as it did after the death of Diana. Reduce the optics, protect the institution, pretend the outrage will burn out on its own. In the end, the final “consequence” wasn’t accountability so much as rebranding. Andrew stripped of the remaining royal gloss, including the Prince styling in practice if not in law, a deliberate narrowing of what he could be called, where he could be seen, and how loudly the family could pretend this was all a private matter. Not justice. Damage control, finally forced into daylight.

Readers may wonder how the two parts of the last section link together. What does Jeffrey Epstein being a foreign intelligence agent have to do with the alleged crimes of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor? The Russians call it “kompromat.” Kompromat is damaging information held against a prominent businessman, politician or other public figure, held for blackmail or influence. It can be sexual, financial, political, or criminal. The objective is not exposure. The objective is control. The KGB popularized the term during the Cold War, but the practice is universal. Intelligence agencies do not merely collect secrets. They cultivate them.

This is the part of the Epstein story that makes governments and institutions visibly uncomfortable, because it reframes the scandal from personal disgrace into national-security vulnerability. If Epstein was indeed a foreign agent, it raises the question of his true intentions in pimping out teenage girls to influential people. If he was running an access operation, introducing underage girls to politicians, princes, financiers, and intelligence-linked figures, then the sex crimes are no longer just crimes. They become currency.

Blackmail is not a relic of trench-coat spy fiction. It is one of the oldest tools in statecraft. A compromised official does not need to be actively extorted. The mere knowledge that evidence exists is often enough. Silence becomes policy. Compliance becomes instinct. And this is where Andrew stops being merely an embarrassing liability and starts looking like something more dangerous: a walking counter-intelligence failure.

Because kompromat is not about one act. It is about what can be proven. Photographs. Flight logs. Testimony. Witnesses. Patterns of behavior. A man who cannot credibly deny his own associations is a man whose judgment can be manipulated, and whose access becomes a risk vector.

One of his victims may have answers.

Speaking in a deposition as part of a lawsuit between Virginia Giuffre and Ghislaine Maxwell, victim Sarah Ransome says that she had personally seen sex tapes that Epstein made of his friends and the girls he was pimping. It was information that reinforced Giuffre’s belief that video existed that was being withheld.

“Based on my knowledge of Epstein and his organization, as well as discussions with the FBI, it is my belief that federal prosecutors likely possess videotapes and photographic images of me as an underage girl having sex with Epstein and some of his powerful friends.” — Virginia Giuffre

One of the great unspoken truths of the intelligence services is that they all use kompromat and that there is no stronger kompromat you can hold over somebody than evidence of child sex abuse.

During the Cold War of the 1950s and 1960s, the security services would use homosexuality as their go-to for kompromat, with such an allegation in those days being more than enough to end a career. Honey traps and male brothels were the standard. However, as society’s attitudes changed, an allegation of being a homosexual no longer had the impact it once did. As such, the security services needed a new tactic, and unless you are in a position such as Andrew, child sex abuse is one of the few crimes that there is surviving.

Indeed, Western intelligence services have spent decades warning about foreign penetration of elites through sex, money, and ego. Yet when the target is a prince, the system suddenly develops amnesia. The same establishment that treats junior civil servants as security risks treats royalty as a public-relations problem.

This is why the Epstein case never behaves like a normal abuse scandal. It keeps brushing against intelligence services, arms dealers, financiers, politicians, and royalty, the very class of people kompromat operations are designed to influence. The question is not whether kompromat exists. History tells us it always does. The question is how much of it has been quietly neutralized in the name of stability.

Seen through this lens, the Palace’s glacial response to Andrew looks less like incompetence and more like containment. Not just protecting a man, but limiting the blast radius.

Because once you admit kompromat is in play, the story stops being about a disgraced duke and becomes about something far more serious: how vulnerable Western power structures really are to private men who know where the bodies are buried, and who taught them how to bury more.

And that is the part nobody in authority is eager to say out loud.

Finally exposed in 2019, Mountbatten is alleged to have been a traitor to his government and a flagrant pedophile on a scale that may rival Jimmy Savile. Mountbatten’s power and influence to abuse children and act against democracy were willingly aided and abetted by the British state.

Readers of “Lord Louis Mountbatten — The British Royal and Accused Pedophile Who Was Above the Law” may recall that Mountbatten was friends with Soviet spy Anthony Blunt. Blunt, who’d been one of the infamous Cambridge Spy Ring, was originally arrested for espionage in 1963 and confessed in 1964, with the Queen being informed as he was Surveyor of the Queen’s Pictures at the time. As the story goes, Blunt was offered immunity and that his treason would be buried in exchange for a full confession. However, Blunt’s confession exposed more than his dalliance with the KGB, and he allegedly had much to say about Lord Mountbatten, Ireland and child sex abuse.

Blunt, like Mountbatten, was a pedophile, and both were members of a ring that procured boys from children’s homes, including Porters School in Enniskillen and Kincora in Belfast. Once the British security services learned of the ring, they allegedly realised the possibility for kompromat, willing to use the boy’s homes and pedophile networks to gain blackmail material against their enemies and keep their allies sweet with regular access to children.

During a subsequent public enquiry, MI5 and MI6 denied they had knowledge of child sex abuse at Kincora or that they covered it up.

It would be foolish to assume that the British security services, the CIA or other allied intelligence agencies were and are unwilling to use such tactics for their own ends. We willingly accept that these groups will murder in the name of national security, yet there is a willful blindness to their willingness to use rape and abuse for the same ends. While the British operation was confined to Ireland, Epstein’s was seemingly far more wide-ranging and the question must be asked as to what material he had, and on who. With who was that information shared, and what decisions were made through fear of blackmail as opposed to genuine political opinion and national interest.

There are parallels and “coincidences” all over this story, and the improbabilities stack up fast. Jimmy Savile and Jeffrey Epstein, two men who built access the same way, by flattering the powerful, attaching themselves to celebrity oxygen, and turning proximity into protection. Allegations swirl that state actors exploited children for leverage. Meanwhile Savile and Ball didn’t just pass through polite society, they got close enough to the royal brand to borrow its shine.

And this is where the official story starts demanding something close to faith. We’re told that a family surrounded by a ring of steel, with world-class security, elite policing, institutional memory, and vetting culture baked into the job, somehow failed to spot the obvious, repeatedly. We’re asked to accept that Savile slipped through without alarm bells. That Ball remained socially acceptable even after conviction. That Andrew’s post-conviction contact with Epstein was just staggering misjudgment rather than a decision made with full knowledge of what it would look like.

We’re also asked to believe the royals are merely unlucky, perpetual victims of charismatic predators, as if they aren’t one of the most protected, advised, and influential families on the planet. When the Catholic Church faced wave after wave of abuse revelations and cover-ups, the world eventually stopped treating it as a bad-apple problem and started asking institutional questions. Yet when similar proximity patterns recur around the monarchy, the same question gets treated as impolite to even consider.

So what is this, exactly? The supreme arrogance that only hereditary power can produce, the belief that ordinary rules don’t apply, that reputation management is the same thing as accountability? Is it genuine blindness, the kind that comes from a life where consequences can always be handled “privately”? Or is there something darker, a culture of protection so reflexive that it functions like an instinct, no matter who gets burned?

As Ian Fleming wrote in Goldfinger, “Once is happenstance. Twice is a coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”